by Donna Karan
Mark took me to a show at one of the clubs—a very grown-up thing to do. We saw Alan King and Bobby Vinton perform. I told Mark I lived in Saddle Ridge Estates, and he thought I lived on an actual estate, which I ran with. “Oh, yeah,” I said casually, “we have all these horses and animals on the estate.” I toyed with him because I never thought we’d see each other again. It turned out that Mark lived near me in Belle Harbor, Queens. I had never been to Belle Harbor but knew it was on the water, in the fancy part of Rockaway Beach. He called when he came back to New York, and we went to a disco with a few of my friends and a few of his. When he picked me up at our two-family home by the railroad tracks, I told him it was a friend’s house. He pulled up in a white GTO convertible, and I was impressed. My uncle Frank owned a Pontiac dealership, after all, so cars mattered—especially convertibles, which symbolized freedom and beaches. On Long Island in the 1960s, it didn’t get much better than having a boyfriend with a convertible.
From the word go, Mark and I had a ball together. I was crazy about him. We both worked long hours in local boutiques—Mark was ambitious, and he wanted to open his own store—and when we weren’t working, we were together. Mark’s family loved me, as I kept him close to home. Belle Harbor was a gorgeous beach, and I was all too happy to go to his house and hang out. His mother and father were a bit on the rigid side, and I would do things like swoop in and suggest we make French toast, and everyone would get into it. I helped loosen them up, and Mark loved me for that.
Mark and I spent our summers going to the beach clubs, where we would rent cabanas and spend our days swimming and then go back at night for dancing or shows. We would match up Ilene or my other friend Sally Brown with one of his friends and go out as a foursome. Sometimes Mark and I would hole up at a hotel called The Plantation in Long Beach and watch movies and make out all night. Or we’d make out in the entryway of my house, as our upstairs apartment was too small to have any privacy. This was the midsixties (before the free-love generation) and I was saving myself for marriage, so I remember lots of making out with Mark. I wasn’t interested in other boys; I liked the security of being with him and him alone.
Mark was incredibly thoughtful. We didn’t have air-conditioning at my house, so Queenie always had a cold towel around her neck or on her forehead. One day Mark showed up with a fan. He was lovely and respectful to my mother, always asking about her day, her headaches, whether there was something he could get her. Mark admired her work ethic and felt bad that she was always so tired. The fighting in my house didn’t faze him at all. He thought it was normal, no big deal. That was the essence of Mark: he looked for the good in everything. My mother loved Mark because he came from “money”—maybe not Five Towns money, but comfortable money. He had his own car, a job, and a real sense of security about him. Mark could do no wrong so far as Queenie was concerned, which made my life much easier.
Mark took me to my senior prom. Even then I hated getting dressed up, but my mother made sure I was dressed better than anyone else. She bought me an Anthony Muto mint-green crepe satin floor-length slip dress with bugle beads across the neckline. (I’m sure she got it wholesale.) My hair was done up with a fabulous braid extension wrapped around my head. This was not your typical prom look at the time, but that was Queenie. Fashion ruled. We didn’t know it then, but she was grooming me for my future.
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3
SCHOOL OF DESIGN
If fashion was my destiny, and I believed it was, I needed a proper education in it. While in 1966 other high school seniors were applying to traditional colleges, I was torn between Parsons School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology, both in Manhattan. Since I loved art so much, I wanted to be a fashion illustrator. Illustration was very prestigious in those days, because no one used photos. Women’s Wear Daily, the magazines, the fashion ads in the New York Times—all illustrations. I thought I was good enough to make it.
First I got a job illustrating for Liz Claiborne, probably through one of my mother’s connections. Liz loved my sketches, and I admired her tremendously. She was a professional and powerful woman. But this was definitely the other side of Seventh Avenue: more corporate, less creative, not me. Then I got a paying gig, again through my mom, as a still-life model for the famous illustrator Antonio Lopez, who was at the very tippy-top of that world. I’d wear the latest fashions, and he’d draw me for the newspapers. With my long limbs and dancer’s understanding of movement, I knew how to make the clothes look good. But I felt very uncomfortable and intimidated in his studio. It was downtown and had a dark, late-sixties psychedelic vibe, and I was a wholesome, naive kid. Finally, I had an interview with Women’s Wear Daily for an illustration internship or summer job—I forget which—and after reviewing my book, the interviewer told me I should rethink my career direction. It’s not that I was a bad sketcher, she said, it was that I wasn’t exacting. I was emotional and used bigger strokes.
When the universe speaks, I listen. If WWD didn’t think illustration was for me, then it wasn’t.
I was accepted at Parsons with a little networking help from my mother, which I needed because of my poor grades. I was “on trial,” meaning I had to pass everything the first year or I was out. Whatever the conditions, I was thrilled I got in, and so was Queenie. Everything changed for me at Parsons. I gained a sense of direction and purpose. It was also where I met my lifelong friend Louis Dell’Olio.
Louis and I connected immediately. Our mutual friend Leslie Mesh introduced us just before school started. A handsome Italian stallion type, Louis lived in Elmont, a Catholic Italian part of Long Island, just twenty minutes away from me. The two of them drove up to my house in Leslie’s Cadillac convertible, and Louis took one look at my gladiator sandals and knew we’d be friends. From that moment on, we were the stars of the Louis and Donna show, always joking and gossiping. We took the Long Island Rail Road to school, the only ones out of the more than two hundred kids in our class who did.
We met Ann Keagy on the first day. An imposing woman in style and stature, she ran the fashion design department at Parsons for three decades and really shaped designer education as we know it. She founded the school’s designer critic program, where Seventh Avenue designers work one-on-one with students. I’ve been on both sides of the program, and it’s brilliant, not only for the students but also for the designers, who get to hire rising stars. Mrs. Keagy was a true executive, very polished, very uptown, and there I was in my leotard and flowing skirts. She didn’t seem too crazy about female designers, maybe because most of the successful American designers at the time were men: Norman Norell, Geoffrey Beene, Galanos, Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, and Halston. At our orientation, she had a special message for girls: “If you think this is home economics and you’re here to make some dresses, you can leave right now.” Nope, Parsons wasn’t going to be easy.
I had no idea, however, just how tough it would be. I don’t respond well to discipline and structure, and Parsons had both in spades. We worked around the clock—it was pure torture, like a never-ending Project Runway episode. The teachers would often say, “This is nothing compared to what designing is like.” And all I could think was, Who would want to be a designer?
Fortunately, I formed a lasting friendship with a fabulous illustration teacher named Marie Essex. She was a tiny little thing, motherly and encouraging. Rather than criticize my illustrations, she worked with me and believed in me, and her confidence meant the world. She went on to chair the school’s fashion department, and years later, as a designer, I made sure I was always available if she needed anything. I adored her.
Thank God for Louis. He kept school fun. We commuted home together, often very late at night, and then worked more once we got there. We were like brother and sister. We’d sleep over at each other’s house. When we stayed at Louis’s, his mother made a big Italian dinner; at mine, Queenie served chicken soup and her baked potatoes. We just clicked in ev
ery way. Unlike the other Parsons kids, who lived in the city, followed every trend, and hit all the hot clubs, we liked living on Long Island.
Another good friend of ours was Linda Fox. She was the daughter of Seymour Fox, a famous coat and suit designer at the time. Linda wore all her father’s clothes, like flared officer coats and A-line dresses with chunky-heeled Pilgrim shoes. She was cool, and it was great having a friend who was a real fashion insider. Linda lived in one of those new white-brick Rudin-owned apartment buildings in Manhattan—ultraposh.
But Louis and I were true partners in crime. He was an amazing sketcher and helped me express my ideas. I helped him sew, something I didn’t mind, as I had a used sewing machine I’d bought for $25 with my Shurries money. I was also good at throwing fabric on the form and draping it. It was instinctual for me; my gut knew what to do.
And yet I failed draping at Parsons. Yes, for a designer known for her wraps and ties, it’s a great punch line. But school draping was different. It was mechanical and focused on pattern making, and I am no technician. But Parsons believed in educating from the ground up, so you were trained to make garments from scratch.
I survived my first year and was holding my own in my second. I had tried living in the city briefly at the beginning of the year, but it didn’t last. I moved in with another Parsons student, but she and her friends were snooty, and I found the city overwhelming. I missed trees and grass, the smells and texture of nature. So after two days, I called my mother and begged her to come get me. Years later, I embraced the city, but at the time, I wanted to leave it at the end of the workday, just as my mother had. I was still a Long Islander. I loved my time with Mark at the ocean and at the beach clubs. He had just opened his shop, Picadilly, so he wasn’t spending time in the city, either.
Two assignments stand out from that year. First, the designer Rudi Gernreich, one of my mentoring critics, assigned me to make a swimsuit. I designed two: one very Gernreich in spirit, with huge cutouts on the torso, the other a funnel-neck suit. I wanted to sew the sexy one, but he insisted I make the funnel neck, which looked like a piece of clothing, not a swimsuit. Looking back, that suit was a blueprint for my iconic bodysuit. The other mentoring critic—whose name escapes me—had me design and sew a dress. I settled on a bias jersey style with a contrasting border. For this same critic, Louis’s project was a halter jumpsuit with a hood shaped like a flower; I still crack up thinking about that one.
The day of our presentations, we woke up early, showered, got to school, and found out that the critic was on his way over sooner than expected. I grabbed an iron and in my rush melted a hole right through the fabric. I burst into tears. We quickly shortened it to a micro-mini, a fix that eliminated the border, which had been the focal point of the dress. Another student, the future designer Kay Unger, modeled it. She looked great, but nothing could save my burned dress. It landed me in summer school.
In addition to taking classes that summer, I earned class credit through an internship. Queenie got me an interview for an intern position at Anne Klein & Co., where her designer friend Chuck Howard was now working. This was 1968, and though the company was brand-new, Anne Klein was already a big deal. She and her first husband, Ben Klein, had launched Junior Sophisticates in 1948, which gave the petite and junior market a more grown-up, fashion-forward look. Anne’s designs had revolutionized that market, which previously had been distinguished by size, not style. Now Anne had a designer company under her own name, in a firm she owned with her second husband, Matthew “Chip” Rubenstein. Their partners were Sandy Smith and Gunther Oppenheim, both industry giants who owned Modelia, a coat company.
Gunther was legendary. Everyone knew, respected, even feared him. He was a huge man who spoke with a deep German accent, chomped big cigars, and rode around town in a custom Rolls-Royce. When I interviewed with Gunther, he asked me what I needed to be paid. I told him, “I don’t need money. I’m here for the experience.” He didn’t believe in free labor and insisted they pay me the going intern rate. I’m sure it wasn’t much, but I was happy to get anything. It turned out that Anne needed an assistant—or, more accurately, a coffee getter and pencil sharpener. The day I met her, I wore a blue pinstripe skirted suit and a big white fedora. While walking up Seventh Avenue, my hat blew off into the dirty street, so I put face powder on it to make it look clean.
Anne met me by the vestibule near the elevators. A petite woman with frosted blond hair, she was wearing a short pleated skirt that revealed skinny legs—all very sixties in feeling. What a forceful presence. She took one look at me and said, “Take a walk,” pointing to the long aisle in front of us.
“Why?”
“Well, I think you’re a little big in the bottom, dear.”
“To be a designer?”
She thought I was there to audition as a model! To this day, I credit Anne Klein for giving me my first insecurities about my weight. Once we cleared up the confusion, she hired me, but I always felt uncomfortably big around such a small, elegant woman.
I loved working with Anne and her team. Her studio was a whole new world steeped in glamour, sophistication, and clothes. I was a pin picker-upper, a food deliverer, a list maker. I did whatever was asked of me, the most junior stuff, but I got to inhale the design room in action. When my summer was over, Anne told me not to go back to school. “This is what you want to do, right?” she asked. I nodded. “Well, then stay. You’ll learn more here than you ever would at school.”
I hated the structure of school, so I was happy to drop out. Mrs. Keagy was furious. Her students didn’t quit unless she wanted them to. It wasn’t that she believed in me, but she would rather expel me than have me quit and work for a Seventh Avenue designer in a job she hadn’t arranged. Louis says that out of the 225 students in our class, only twenty-one actually completed the program. Who would have thought a lifetime later I’d be so involved with Parsons educational programs that they’d give me an honorary doctorate or that I’d be partnering with them to establish a vocational education center in Haiti?
That was the moment I began to understand that there isn’t just one way to learn, and that experiencing life, not sitting in a classroom, was mine. I knew I had to find my own way, however unconventional my path might be.
For me, everything fell into place after that summer. Mark and I, who already felt and acted like a married couple—it never occurred to us that we wouldn’t get married—decided to make it official. We didn’t have a formal engagement, but it was enough for Queenie to put a down payment on a reception room in the Essex House overlooking Central Park. I was nineteen and loved the sense of security Mark gave me. We were best friends and laughed all the time. We shared the same values, the same love of Long Island and living near the water. Having felt so isolated and alone for much of my childhood, I loved being his constant focus. I knew Mark would provide for us.
He was also rescuing me from Queenie. He was my ticket out of that household and a means to create my own. More than anything else, I wanted a warm, loving home full of family. I didn’t want my mother’s commuting-to-the-city life. My plan was to work in fashion for a bit and then become a full-time mother. But what’s that famous expression? Man plans, God laughs.
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THUNDERSTRUCK
There I was, engaged to Mark, and my friend Ilene Wetson wanted to throw me a party. She invited me to discuss it over dinner at her Manhattan apartment. Ilene was my best friend from high school and someone I could be completely myself with. Everyone thought we were sisters because we looked so alike. She had just finished a two-year program in interior design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and her family had rented a two-bedroom place on 57th Street between Sutton Place and First Avenue, on the far East Side of Manhattan. It was mostly Ilene’s, but her family would stay there, too, which is why she had the extra bedroom. By dinnertime, a snowstorm was whitening the windows, and I knew I’d have to spend the night in the city.
> Ilene had invited her friend Stephan Weiss to join us for dinner. Their parents were good friends, and he knew her brothers and cousins as well. Stephan, she told me, was separated from his wife and living in a small apartment over a burger joint nearby. Since I was engaged to someone Ilene knew and liked, this wasn’t a setup. She buzzed him in, and after he finished shaking the snow off his coat, he looked at me and smiled.
“Hey, you must be Donna. I’m Stephan.” Eyes twinkling, he offered his hand.
I can only describe that moment as an out-of-body experience. Stephan was tall, dark-haired, handsome, sexy, charming, and very grown-up in my young eyes. A real man’s man. I’m sure my mouth hung open. He kept smiling. I must have smiled back.
I don’t remember much about the dinner. But afterward he and I sat together on Ilene’s sofa. I didn’t have to speak, because Stephan did all the talking in his incredibly soft and sexy voice. He talked about astronomy, quantum physics, all sorts of esoteric things. I had no idea what he was saying, but it didn’t matter. I was hypnotized. I didn’t think about Mark for even a second. I felt suspended from my actual life. Before the night was over, we wound up in Ilene’s mother’s bedroom—me, the girl who had been saving herself for marriage.
Because of the snowstorm, there was no getting out to Long Island the next morning. I went home with Stephan, whose apartment was within walking distance on 54th Street. We stayed there into the next night. It’s hard to describe how well we clicked and the kind of passion we experienced. I was convinced it was fated, written in the stars—all those things you read about but don’t really think will happen, at least not to you. There was no reasoning, no logic. I felt as if I had crossed over into another dimension, one with no connection to reality.
